A sheep that moults

Manx Loughton is proving to be my favourite breed of sheep. Unchanged since the days of the Vikings, they are far from the big, white commercial bruisers that spring to most people’s minds - our two girls are small and brown, but what we lose in terms of fast-fattening productivity is more than compensated for by resilience – they lamb without problem, don’t suffer from foot rot, their tails are skinny so don’t need dagging (shaving to prevent muck sticking to the wool which attracts egg-laying flies). And now, with the weather warming they are naturally moulting their fleeces – and we are spared the usual dilemma of either paying a shepherd over the odds to shear a diminutive flock or to do it ourselves with a long pair of scissors (quite tricky, not fun for either sheep or smallholders, and with results that are scruffy-looking at best).

With luck the black lamb in the picture (fathered by a black welsh mountain ram) will fatten slowly but steadily on a diet of grass and wild herbs in our fields, and will produce a satisfactory if not exactly ramboesque carcass, packed with flavour. Quality before quantity all the way!